IMPACT OF COMPETITOR AND CUSTOMER ORIENTATION ON OPERATIONAL PERFORMANCE- 3RD PARTY LOGISTICS’ PERSPECTIVE

Abstract: Third party logistics has become an important element of supply chain management due to its longer and complex involvement. The key to 3PL's success is through maintaining an excellent quality of relation between the organization and orientation of competitor and customers. It is believed that 3rdparty logistics providers can handle multiple elements and operational approaches to create value in their business. But the problem arises when firms are only customer-orientated and not competitor-oriented. This research paper further studied the impact of competitor orientation and customer orientation on operational performance of an organization through relationship quality. The objective of this study was to fill the voids and to expand the understanding of 3rdparty logistics' point of view on how competitor and customer orientation impacts on operation performance of an organization. In this research, the theoretical framework indicates a number of variables which includes operational performance as dependent variable, competitor and customer orientation as independent variable and relationship quality, serving as mediator between customer-competitor orientation and operational performance. The sample size taken for this study was 258 and the respondents for this research were the employees of 3rd party logistics provider organizations. One of the reason for selecting employees of 3rdparty logistics providing firms is because this study is checking the impact of competitor and customer orientation on operational performance through maintaining relationship quality and employees are the key element in this relationship. With regard to this research paper, the statistical testing includes confirmatory factor analysis to check construct and reliability of this study and the software used for this research were SPSS, AMOS and Excel. This research highlights the key elements and will be beneficial for the 3rdparty logistics providers and their organizations as this study would help them in elevating the standards of their operational performances.Keywords:Competitor orientation, customer orientation, Relationship quality and Operational performance.